Chris Skidmore MP

Chris Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

Today is the day that 600,000 students will have been nervously awaiting, as GCSE results are finally revealed. As everyone who has been through the stress of results will know this will be a huge moment for them, but it’s worth remembering that they’re not the only ones who’ve been keenly, and perhaps apprehensively, looking forward to these results, because these are also the first indication we’ve had of the success of the EBacc.

Announced in 2010 ,the EBacc performance measure was designed to encourage schools to push students to take the most academic subjects. The past obsession with 5 A*-C grades in any subject had led to some schools pushing students towards softer subjects where they’d be more likely to get a passing grade, denying them the benefit of a highly rigorous and testing education.

The measure demands that students take a core of academic subjects: English, maths, history or geography, two sciences and a language; subjects which will give students a demanding education and leave them best prepared for the next steps of their education and employment.

Well, the results are in, and Michael Gove can breathe a sigh of relief, because the figures today show clearly that the EBacc has been one of the single most successful education policies in recent times, successfully reversing the decline we’ve been seeing in take up of the traditional academic subjects.

History entries are up 17 per cent on last year, reaching 260,236 they are the highest they have been for at least 16 years, with 1997 the first year we have data for.

Modern languages entries are up 18 per cent from last year, rising to 362,903, the highest they have been for five years. Compared to last year entries in Spanish have risen 25.8 per cent, in French they’re up 15.5 per cent, and German entries are up by nine per cent

Entries in the individual sciences are at the highest they have been for at least 16 years. From last year entries in biology are up 5 per cent, chemistry entries are up 4 per cent and physics entries are up 2 per cent.

Geography entries have risen 19 per cent from last year, reaching 222,852, the highest they have been for nine years.

This is huge progress to be made in just one year, and it will leave a lasting legacy. Tens of thousands more pupils are now benefitting from a more rigorous and demanding education. These students will now be much better placed as they go in to post-16 education having been pushed by their schools to reach their full potential.

While today in particular, our applause should be focused on the thousands of students who have achieved so much success after two years of hard work, we at least shouldn’t forget that today has also shown the Ebacc to be one of the great education policy successes, and that deserves some congratulations.

Chris Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

Over the last decade
A-level results day, full of thousands of individual moments of joy, relief,
and for some, frustration, had become rather formulaic for those watching from
afar. Each year results would improve, Ministers would warmly congratulate the
hard-working students and teachers whose smiling faces plastered the news, and
voices from the side would quietly suggest that some of this might be down to
grade inflation.

That all changed last year, when for the first time in over 20 years the
proportion of students achieving the top grades, A or A*, fell, dropping from
27 per cent to 26.6 per cent. The last time this happened was in 1991, when
just 11.9 per cent were awarded an A, down marginally on 12 per cent the year
before. This year, once again students are less likely to have got the top
grade, with the percentage falling another 0.3 per cent to 26.3; but, as with
last year, this isn’t a sign that students are relaxing. Standards are rightly
being raised, so that exams demand more from the very brightest pupils, while
the grade system is made more meaningful.

Yet while talk of the numbers getting top grades is likely to dominate
discussions in the news today one piece of good news which mustn’t be allowed
to go ignored is the increasing proportion of students who have been taking the
most academic subjects. From 2010 to 2013:

Yet while the revelation about Twigg’s
unusual taste in films has dominated what little attention his letter has
received, his charge that reforms have been a triumph of dogma over evidence has
gone largely unaddressed. It’s an often-made accusation, much loved by the NUT,
and it’s far from the first time it’s been made by Twigg. Had he been paying
closer attention though he’d have noticed that the publication last week of Ofsted’s
first inspections of free schools offered yet more evidence that the programme
is proving a resounding success.

With the free schools ranked outstanding
including the Canary Wharf College in Tower Hamlets and the All Saints Junior
School, this success can’t be explained away with spurious claims that these are
schools for the wealthy, the "vanity projects" of "yummy-mummies" that the Labour MP Tristram Hunt
predicted. In fact, the opposite is true. The 24 schools inspected were
primarily concentrated in deprived areas, with half residing in the most
deprived 30 per cent of communities. These schools are bringing high standards
to areas where traditionally pupils have been let down.

Chris Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

For many years, a political narrative has been woven in the belief
that there is no alternative to European Union. The status quo must remain,
while further integration into the European 'projet' must be seen as
inevitable, the consequence of Britain's slide into the mediocrity of a second
rate power. This narrative has been too dominant for too long. Back in 1999,
the establishment of various political hues told us that Britain had to accept
its European fate and that we had to join the Euro. Such defeatism seemed to
have its place right at the heart of policy-making. Some of its proponents such
as Peter Mandelson even found a place at the Cabinet Table.

There can be no doubt that the belief in ever-closer Union has had a corrosive
effect on British politics. Be it Tony Blair’s decision to surrender our rebate
or Gordon Brown’s signing of the Lisbon Treaty, the belief that European
integration must be embraced has led to some of the worst policy decisions of
the last 40 years.

History is beginning to witness a change: for the first time, mainstream
opinion is moving towards tearing apart the fabric of the cosy consensus that
Britain must stand or fall with its European neighbours, or become isolated,
set apart from an EU state bent on political unification. David Cameron's
determination to argue for a real-terms cut in the EU budget was seen as
attempting a leap too far: yet this determination has brought with it success,
with an agreement that the budget can be reduced as the Prime Minister argued.
And for the first time, a British political leader broke the trend of his
predecessors with his pledge in January to renegotiate our EU membership and
offer of an In/Out referendum. For the first time in many years, we have a Prime
Minister who challenges the idea of “ever closer union”. Yet his decision was
derided by pro-Europeans, with one even dubbing the idea as “clinically
insane”.

Chris Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education Select Committee. Follow Chrison Twitter.

The cost and quality of childcare is an issue
which touches millions of parents and families across the country. All parents
want the best care for their children, and they also want it to come at a
reasonable price. Yet somehow, as important an issue as it is, we have managed
to stick with a system that isn’t working for anyone.

The costs to families are huge. They face the
second highest childcare costs in the OECD - at 26.6 per cent of family income
it is more than double the OECD average of 11.8 per cent. When it takes an
average of four months full time work for a mother to cover the cost of her
child’s care, it is hardly surprising that many are being kept at home because
they can’t afford to go out and work. Department for Education (DfE) data shows
that half of all stay at home mothers want to get back to work, but the sky
high costs of childcare provision are holding them back. Worryingly, the problem
is getting even worse. Figures from the Daycare Trust show childcare costs are
increasing by six per cent a year, well above the rise in wages.

High costs aren’t for lack of Government
funding. In spite of the large costs to parents, the Government is still
spending twice the OECD average on child care. These also aren’t a reflection of
a much higher quality of care in the UK. While costs are high, wages for carers
are low, which is dragging down quality. On average a childcare worker in
England is paid just £13,300, and a supervisor £16,850, compared to £20,000 and
£30,000 respectively in both Germany and Denmark.

It is of course no coincidence that the
crippling cost comes alongside the other thing which makes our childcare system
an exception in the world: the hugely restrictive ratios of staff to children
we impose. While in England nurseries must have one member of staff for every
four two year olds in the Netherlands and Ireland the ratio is one to six; in
France is one to eight; and in Denmark, Germany and Sweden there is no national
limit at all.

Chris Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

Over the past three years, Michael Gove’s
tenure at the Department for Education has produced nothing short of a
revolution in education, with no sign of slowing down: the introduction of free
schools, controversial changes to the national curriculum, the extension of
the academies programme - and now further changes to make GCSEs more robust
qualifications have meant that the Department’s programme for reform has been
one of the benchmarks of the coalition’s success. With so much already being
achieved, this should not mean that we should let our foot slip off the accelerator
of reform, but to constantly ask ourselves the question: where next?

One of the most pressing problems we should be
turning our attention towards is the large inequalities in performance between
Local Authorities. Ofsted’s report last year picked up on the huge variations
across the country in the chances a child has of attending a primary school
ranked good or outstanding. While nine out of ten children in Camden and Barnet
will get to attend such a school for those in Derby and Coventry that figure
drops to just four out of ten, leaving the majority in schools in need of
improvement.

These variations exist at least in part
because, unfortunately, there are a significant number of local authorities that are simply failing to make use of the tools they have been given to
improve schools. The Ofsted report revealed that of the three authorities with
the greatest proportion of schools found to be inadequate between 2007 and
2011 - Leicester, Bournemouth, and North East Lincolnshire - two hadn’t issued a
single warning notice. Looking at the 17 authorities where ten per cent or more of
schools were found to be inadequate, it was found that only ten had issued any
such notices. A similarly poor usage of Interim Executive Boards was
discovered, with almost half of authorities having not used even one, despite having
the kind of weak schools which IEBs were introduced to help quickly turn
around.

Chris
Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education
Select Committee. Follow Chrison Twitter.

Figures
released this week revealed the huge scale of six figure salaries amongst NHS
managers and consultants. More than 7,800 were paid more than £100,000, with a
third of them on salaries larger than the Prime Minister’s.

In
a time of public sector pay restraint these figures highlight the need for
reform of pay on the NHS, particularly as they have increased at nearly half of
the trusts which were surveyed. This contrasts sharply with the broader outlook
on pay, which has changed more positively over the last year. From 2010/11 to
2011/12 total staff costs have fallen by £1.5 billion, with the cost per head
reduced by an average of £215.

Staff
costs account for a huge proportion of NHS budgets. According to the King’s
Fund, NHS spending on staff, at £42.8 billion, accounted for 64 per cent of the
operating costs of Primary Care Trusts, NHS and foundation trusts. As we face
up to an ageing population and fiscal reality this is clearly an area that
should be targeted for savings, and it can’t be right that managers at the top
are protected.

Chris
Skidmore is Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a member of the Education
Select Committee. Follow Chris on
Twitter.

One
of the many things that is being said of Baroness Thatcher in the light of her
sad death last week, from across the political spectrum, is that she set the
political landscape in which we still live today. This is certainly true in
education; during her time in power there was a fundamental shift in approach
which lasts to this day.

One
of the key legacies is the idea, which we now take for granted, that parents
should be able to make informed choices about what is best for their child.
Prior to the 1980 Education Act there has been no obligation for local
authorities to take account of parents’ choice of school.

Parents
weren’t only being deprived of choice; they were also not being properly
informed about the quality of their child’s education. Under Thatcher, schools
became obliged to publish prospectuses giving details about examination results
and Inspectors’ reports ceased to be secret.

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health and Education Select Committees. Follow Chris on Twitter.

Following
an extended period of silence Andy Burnham has finally stuck his head above the
parapet on twitter, repeating predictions he first made in 2011 that the NHS is
at death’s door. Only this time, apparently ‘this time we mean it’.

In
less than 140 characters, it seems that Burnham, still damaged from the Francis
report’s horrific conclusions into Labour’s tenure at the department, has torn
whatever remaining credibility he had to shreds. Last year I took a
retrospective look at the ridiculous claim he’d made when the Health and Social
Care Bill was going through parliament that there were only ‘72 hours’ to save
the NHS. Months later, with the Bill passed, it was clear his predictions of
death had been premature.

As
I noted ‘the political debate ended up becoming more about paranoid speculation
than the practical content of the bill itself, with Andy Burnham championing
the interests of the middle-managers rather than professionals and patients,
claiming that there was "72 hours to save the NHS". For someone who
in the final months of the Labour government was championing GP-led
commissioning, it was an unfortunate corner to be backed into. Months on, the
NHS remains alive and well’ (Conservative Home, 29 August 2012).

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health and Education Select Committees. Follow Chris on Twitter.

The
way in which history is taught in this country has long been in need of a
radical change. That is the message delivered today by leading historians in an
open letter to The Times (£) (reprinted in full below).

The
signatories to the letter, including Niall Ferguson, Antony Beevor, David
Starkey, Michael Burleigh, Andrew Roberts, Simon Sebag Montefiore, along with
history professors based in Oxford, Cambridge, London and Exeter argue that the
current system is denying pupils ‘the chance to obtain a full knowledge of the
rich tapestry of the history of their own country’. Sadly many students are
leaving education with gaping holes in basic historical knowledge. The extent
of this was revealed in a poll commissioned by Lord Ashcroft which shockingly
found that 11 to 18 year olds were significantly more likely to be able to
correctly identify a picture of Churchill the insurance dog than one of
Churchill, our great wartime leader (Lord Ashcroft Polls, 25 June 2012).

Worryingly,
too few students are choosing to carry History on to GCSE or A-Level. What’s
more, as I found out when I produced a report on the GCSE uptake of History, it
is disproportionately dropped by those coming from low-income backgrounds (History
in Schools, 19 December 2011). This should be of grave
concern for anyone who believes that History, like Maths, English and the
Sciences, is one of the key elements of a good education and an important tool
with which to build an understanding of the world.

As
well as being more interesting, a reformed curriculum will, crucially, be a
great deal more enlightening. As is made clear in today’s letter the principle
of the changes being proposed recognises that fundamental to a full
understanding and appreciation of history is a strong foundation of knowledge
of the historical context in which events occur. When a pupil understands the
context within which events occur they are able to gain a far richer
understanding of them and how they relate to each other over the course of a
period.

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health and Education Select Committees. Follow Chris on Twitter.

For a party that will even take falling unemployment as
an excuse to attack the government Labour have been deathly quiet in response
to the shocking revelations about what went wrong in the Mid Staffordshire
Foundation Trust. They have good reason to be, for the Francis report laid bare
the cost in lives of Labour’s time in charge of the NHS.

As we now know there was failure at regional and national
levels in the NHS. At the Mid-Staffordshire trust this resulted in as many as
1,200 avoidable deaths between 2005 and 2009. One cannot fail to be moved when
one hears the harrowing accounts from the families of those who died needlessly
due to systemic failure and a culture which put up with inexcusably low
standards of care.

Labour, and their target-centred, reorganisation-heavy
approach to the NHS, which did so much to sap morale and incentivise bad
behaviour, should be taking their share of the blame for the crisis. A crisis,
it is striking to note, that happened in a trust which, in a move proposed by
then junior minister Andy Burnham, had been awarded the supposed gold-standard
of Foundation Trust status.

Rather than be held to account Labour and Andy Burnham
have desperately tried to brush this all under the carpet. As health secretary
Andy Burnham ordered the first inquiry into the incident as reports of
avoidable deaths came to the public’s attention. Its highly constrained terms
of reference and private hearings gave Andrew Lansley cause to warn parliament
at the time that it was an inquiry ‘designed more to focus on local management
than to get to the full truth and the full context of the tragedy at Stafford
hospital’.

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health and Education Select Committees. He is also is author of Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (Weidenfeld and Nicholson) published on 23 May 2013. Follow Chris on Twitter.

The tombs of our kings and queens are difficult to miss. Encased in grand monuments of marble or bronze, in death as in life, they represent the glory and greatness of the royal bones gathering dust in the coffins beneath the ground. Westminster Abbey is full of them, including the Renaissance tomb of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, depicted as an old man staring piously to the skies, his hands clasped in prayer. It is tempting to imagine him giving thanks to God for placing him on the throne at the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485 when, having landed at the westernmost tip of Wales with his band of foreign mercenaries and Welshmen just two weeks before, Henry had managed to steal victory against his enemy, Richard III.

In contrast, the tomb of England’s last Plantagenet king has long been lost to history. After the battle, Richard’s naked body, ‘besprinkled in mire and filth’, had been carried into Leicester the afternoon after the battle. Trussed over the back of a horse, with his ‘privy parts’ barely concealed by a loin cloth, members of the public stood by the roadside, gazing in bewilderment at the body of a man who that same morning had rode into battle King of England. For two days his body was placed on public display to banish any rumours that he had survived, before being buried in a pauper’s grave in the nave of Greyfriars Church in Leicester. It was not until ten years later that Henry decided to spend a paltry £10 on a gravestone, which eventually was broken up along with the monastery during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. The site became a country house, before the ravages of progress witnessed the expansion of the city, and the location of Richard’s final resting place was turned into a council car park. Since then, any notion that Richard’s body might be one day discovered has been the stuff of legend — until now.

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

We have long known that Britain is an ageing country where the amount spent on care is projected to rise continuously over the next decades. The Personal Social Services Research Unit’s modelling of future expenditure for the Dilnot Commission predicted that by 2030, the total annual spending on long-term care for people will have risen from £20.6 billion to £44.8 billion, of which £26.3 billion is state funding. This would constitute a rise in spending in services as a % of GDP from 1.63% to 2.31%. Population projections also suggest that between 2011 and 2016 the number of people aged 65 and over will rise by 1.4 million, and by 2.4 million by 2021.

It is not just the costs of care that we must be concerned with: in particular, an elderly society will present new challenges, particularly around the rise in dementia. With an ageing population, it is expected that the number of people with dementia will increase considerably, to over 1 million by 2021. Estimates put the cost of dementia at £23 billion a year, while the pressure placed on NHS services presents an increasing challenge: in England at any given time, one quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people over 65 with dementia. It is clear that reducing the number of occupied hospital beds is a question of better prevention, not rationing. The American healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente operates on the principle that ‘unplanned hospital admissions are a sign of system failure’, something that is gradually beginning to percolate into the NHS. However, the NHS still uses 3 ½ times the number of bed days for those aged 65 and over, compared with Kaiser Permanente. If we can reduce the demand for hospital beds by just 10%, this could potentially free up £1 billion that could be redirected into community based care services.

As with so many conditions, early diagnosis is key: a recent report by the Social Market Foundation, A Future State of Mind, has highlighted our poor record on early diagnosis and treatment of dementia when compared to our European counterparts, citing one alarming study which claimed that 14% of people diagnosed with dementia did not subsequently make an appointment with a doctor, compared with 0-2% In Germany, Spain, France and Italy. Moreover, it is thought that there are 400,000 people living with Alzheimer’s in Britain, whose condition remains undiagnosed.

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

If there is one issue that unites people in the Kingswood constituency that I was born in and represent, it is protecting the Green Belt. Ever since Labour tried to build 10,000 houses on it, and even before, local campaigns led by committed residents have had to continually fight to prevent development that would pave over much of the open space between Bristol and Bath.

The problem is that the odds are stacked against local opponents of unpopular planning decisions, in an ongoing battle between David and Goliath. Petitions are signed, protests take place, local councillors are lobbied, and politicians take the message to Westminster. Yet all too often, the deep pockets and corporate resources of developers, combined with a bewilderingly complex planning system, makes David’s slingshot pale into comparison.

At present, it is only the developer that can appeal against the refusal of planning permission, aside from legal challenges there is no similar right of redress for those affected by a decision. Local councils are often keener to avoid a messy appeals process than to stand up for those people that they are democratically accountable to.

After polling my constituents’ views, I introduced a Ten Minute Rule Bill earlier today that would enshrine in law a community right of appeal against planning decisions.

Chris Skidmore is the Member of Parliament for Kingswood and a Member of the Health Select Committee. Follow Chris on Twitter.

This last week we have been inundated with articles, speeches and pamphlets, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge report. Predictably, the majority of these have come from the left, celebrating the report that founded the Welfare State. Yet as the Free Enterprise Group’s recent report A New Beveridge illustrates, Conservatives should take note of the austere old Liberal. Leafing through the faded, yellow pages of The Beveridge Report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, it is startling to see how familiar are the arguments Beveridge makes, and how similar his approach is to that of the modern Conservative Party.

It is important to recognise that Beveridge’s original aims and ambitions were very different from what the welfare state ended up being. If we could return to these founding principles, we may be able to ensure that we can foster greater individual responsibility at the same time as ensuring those in greatest need are supported. His recommendations are tough, but compassionate. The introduction to the Beveridge report explained the way that the new system should operate, in abstract terms:

“social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family.”

It also made a clear appeal to duty and obligation on the part of the beneficiaries:

‘The higher the benefits provided out of a common fund for unmerited misfortune, the higher must be the citizen’s obligation not to draw upon that fund unnecessarily.’